So Who Is Defending Real Child Abuse?

Last week Salon.com published an article about famed evolutionist Richard Dawkins titled “Richard Dawkins defends ‘mild pedophilia,’ says it does not cause ‘lasting harm.’”

The article began, “In a recent interview with the Times magazine, Richard Dawkins attempted to defend what he called ‘mild pedophilia,’ which, he says, he personally experienced as a young child and does not believe causes ‘lasting harm.’”

Now, Dawkins has previously accused Christians of child abuse because they teach children Christianity, yet he defends real child abuse! But then again, he is an atheist, and as such has no basis for moral standards except his own opinion.

I want to recap what we have written about Richard Dawkins’s “child abuse” allegations in the past. In May of this year, AiG writer Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell wrote the following:

Call it “child abuse” and you get everybody’s attention. That’s the latest headline-gaining tactic employed by atheists whose agenda is to “protect” children from their parents’ religion. The Daily Mail has tweaked the “twitters” once again by its article opening with “Professor Richard Dawkins has claimed that forcing a religion on children without questioning its merits is as bad as ‘child abuse.’”

Atheist Richard Dawkins claims that teaching children to accept their families’ religious beliefs is child abuse. He considers this form of “abuse” to be more devastatingly and permanently harmful than sexual abuse. Though he has said this before, his remarks returned to headline status after he reiterated these claims April 21 at the Chipping Norton Literary Festival.

And back in 2006, I wrote this:

In a TV program broadcast . . . recently throughout the United Kingdom (and no doubt soon to be shown on American television as well), the world’s leading spokesperson on evolution, atheist Dr. Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, made these remarkable and shocking statements:

I’m very concerned about the religious indoctrination of children. I want to show how faith acts like a virus that attacks the young and infects generation after generation. . . .

It’s time to question the abuse of childhood innocence with superstitious ideas of hellfire and damnation. And I want to show how the scriptural roots of the Judeo-Christian moral edifice are cruel and brutish.

What in the 21^st century are we doing venerating a book [i.e., the Bible] that contains such stuff?

After saying that religion is a form of child abuse, Dawkins’s tirade (he became very angry at times on the program) against Christianity did not wane:

The God of the Old Testament has got to be the most unpleasant character in all fiction—jealous and proud of it, petty, vindictive, unjust, unforgiving, racist, an ethnic cleanser urging His people on to acts of genocide.

When it comes to children, I think of religion as a dangerous virus. It’s a virus which is transmitted partly through teachers and clergy, but also down the generations from parent to child to grandchild. Children are especially vulnerable to infection by the virus of religion.

Well, what more can I say except that Richard Dawkins needs the Lord! I know many of you have prayed for him over the years. Let’s all make an effort to especially pray for him today. God saved the “chief of sinners”^*—let’s pray for Richard Dawkins’s salvation.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying, Ken

^*I.e., the Apostle Paul, who wrote, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15).